To understand what the midterms mean, you first need a basic understanding of how the US federal government works. In an effort to be brief here, I am going to gloss over many details.
The federal government is comprised of three branches: Judicial (the supreme court), Executive (the president), and Legislative (congress).
The Legislative branch is bicameral; it has two entities: the Senate and the House of Representatives (commonly referred to as “the House”). The Senate has two senators per state, for a total of 100. The House has a number of representatives per state, roughly based on the state’s population, for a total of 435 voting members.
In order for anything to have approval from the Legislative branch, approval from both houses is usually required.
Through a system of checks and balances, cooperation/approval from two of three branches is usually required to get anything done. Before the midterms, the *Republicans (aka “GOP”) controlled all three branches.
Following the midterms, the Democrats now have a strong majority in both houses of the Legislative branch. In trump’s first term, the Democrats had a slim majority in both houses, but a few Democrats in both houses were… convinced… to vote along Republican lines. With this wider majority, that’s now less likely.
However, the Republicans still have a lame duck president determined to seize as much power as possible, a super majority in the supreme court who have already ruled the president is immune from prosecution, a wide majority of judges in the federal court system, and many loyalists is smaller government agencies, regulatory bodies, and lower levels of government.
So, while the Republicans no longer have control of all levers of government, the Democrats don’t control enough to get anything meaningful done. They do now have the power to stop, or at least greatly delay, a lot more than they did before.
Impeachment may again be on the table, but I’m not holding my breath.
* Edited to remove pejorative and preserve informative tone throughout, though I stand by my assertion the party is comprised largely of pedophiles and their various enablers.
Great write-up. However, since this is intended to be more educational, referring to the GOP without explaining then turning it into a pejorative isn’t useful. That said, you could of course keep it in as commentary.
For anyone reading who doesn’t know (perhaps international): GOP stands for Grand ol’ Party and it’s another slightly antiquated term for Republicans. The “Good ole pedophiles” is obviously an insult, but one based on actual actions and evidence backed claims. They have blocked and refused to investigate or prosecute anyone in the Epstein files, even with coroborating accusers and witnesses.
Essentially, the “blue wave” means the Democrats have a majority in both chambers of Congress. They have broadcast widespread opposition to the MAGAgenda, and have the power to do so. Congress passes laws and confirms presidential appointees to executive offices. With Democrats in power, trumps agenda will no longer be rubber stamped by Congress, i.e. they have the power to refuse to confirm trumps nominees, pass laws to counteract executive orders, and control funding streams to rogue federal agencies. Unfortunately, there is not a blue veto-proof majority in Congress, so trump will likely veto a ton of legislation, but that’s preferable to what the last two years have been.
Congress also has the power to open investigations into all the gross misconduct the administration has engaged in, as well as remove offenders from office.
Of course, it remains to be seen how much of these powers will be exercised, but we should remain hopeful.
It should be noted at least one Democrat has said they’re open to confirming Trump Supreme Court appointees, that being U.S. Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, so far.
and you’ll definitely immediately see a party divided between who thinks they should do some investigation, lots of investigations, or none and just focus on legislation. There is a risk in just sitting all day on cspan doing investigations and getting no where, but legislation as you mentioned is likely to go nowhere other than showing on record who supports or doesn’t a particular policy or change, so there will in fact need to be some balance found if Dems are to hold congress and the senate and take the executive office in 28.
Trump still holds power of foreign policy, and war powers, and he will ramp up those abuses even further to change the narrative and punish the nation for slighting him, as any good narcissist can be expected to do.
Trump still holds power of foreign policy, and war powers
I hope the new congress addressees this since from the American legal perspective, the war in Iran has not been deemed a war, and since congress is the body that gets to decide to declare war, if the system works as intended they could decline to legitimize the war and thus end hostilities.
They’ll definitely need to preemptively address his ridiculous “hack” of rebooting the war on weekends to do stock manipulation and reset the 30 days of war powers.
How do they have the power to remove people from office. Say the secretary of some department or a 3rd tier director. How about ability to remove an appointed judge.
They can impeach anyone but what type of majority do they need to make it real. They don’t have the much bite if the DoJ doesn’t do their part and arrest people
To get rid of someone due to impeachment, you need 2/3 of the Senate, something that Democrats alone don’t have. Only one Senator has voted against their party to impeach and they aren’t in office any more.
That 2/3 majority, is that for any appointed position. Does it include supreme court judges
The party opposite Trump’s won enough federal seats to:
- Control what legislation is voted on
- Hold investigations
- Subpoena individuals
- Block appointees
They did not win enough seats to:
- Remove anyone from office
- Pass bills that Trump’s party doesn’t want
- Pass bills that Trump doesn’t want
The effect of that is:
- Everything Trump has done in the last couple years and will do in the next 2 years will be looked into
- There will be no or very few new laws
- The makeup of SCOTUS remains the same unless someone dies
- There will be no or very few backfills or replacements of executive or judicial positions
- Trump will continue to rule via executive decree
- SCOTUS will continent to support him
- Trump will continue to withhold financial support to the majority of the states
On a state level a number of states that were part of Trump’s part strongholds have flipped therefore:
- More states can oppose or collaborate in opposition to Trump’s policies
- More states can sign pro voter legislation
That means:
- No more razor wire in the Rio Grande
- No more Texas specify immigration action
- States can establish independent districting boards to ensure more fair elections in the future
- States can join interstate popular voting compacts which can usurp the limitations of the electoral college system
- States can adopt fairer voting measures like ranked choice, less restrictive voter registration measures, and more voting locations
- States can investigate and prosecute crimes committed in their state (such as tax crimes or ice actions) (Elon Musk lives in a blue state now)
All told, everything at the federal level is blocked, but there will be more “news” about proposals that don’t go anywhere or investigations that turn up vile crimes that can’t carry any charge. States have an opportunity to make future elections look like this one, and there will be more action to hold federal individuals to account so there will be more “news” of [state] finds [billionaire, politician, ice agent] committed [fraud, murder].
It doesn’t restrict Trump, by himself, at all. Trump is the president, i.e. the head of the federal executive branch, which is by itself unaffected. Anything that Trump (or his successor) had the authority to do last week, he still has now and will still have after the new Congress is inaugurated.
What has been changed is the majority in the legislative branch, this means that all new federal statutes in the US will (after January) need to be passed by a majority in that new Congress, in which both houses have a Democratic majority, meaning that the Republicans can no longer pass new legislation all on their own.
It’s worth noting that Trump has claimed to have authority over a lot of things that were previously considered under the control of the Senate and Congress, or at least something that they had a say in. However, the current Senate and Congress for some reason have not stepped in to tell Trump that he doesn’t have full/any authority over those things. That will almost certainly change when the new batch of legislators is sworn in, so there will be at least some additional restrictions on Trump in the sense that some of the restrictions he should have already been subject to will finally be applied.
Ahhhh that makes sense thanks
It is pretty important in that the House of Representatives and the Senate have their seats exchanged, and I believe they have the power to pass or reject laws (albeit the president can still veto). They can’t immediately fix everybody’s problems, but it is a step in the right at the very least! It’s also super exciting that many Republican “safe” states have swung Democrat, including Texas (the big one), South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa (and others, like Florida, were a tight race)! People have truly voted “as if Trump was on the ballot”, and it’s a sign that they want change!
And Abdul Al-Sayed from Michigan is the first Muslim senator, and he achieved victory, despite the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby dumping tens of millions of dollars into the campaign against him and the Islamophobic rhetoric of the Republicans. He is advocating for universal healthcare (Trump calls this “communist”) and the end of U.S. military aid to the Israeli war machine.
Note that I’m not American, so I could be wrong in some aspects here.
Depends on how much spine the Democrats have. You’ve had good explanations of the playing field, but in concrete terms while the Democrats can’t do new things without negotiating with Trump (and vice versa) they can undo old things, for example stopping the war in Iran, impeaching Pete Hegseth (they’d need some Republican defectors, but for Hegseth it’s possible to get those) and impeaching Trump (they can’t actually convict without those same Republican defectors, but they can launch an actual investigation now). Perhaps more importantly, they have majorities in various traditionally red and heavily gerrymandered state legislatures, so they can turn the electoral maps there into something reasonably sane and break the GOP’s stranglehold on some of them (which is based more on gerrymandering than on actual popularity).
In the US, you need a majority to win a vote, but you need 60 seats to pass a filibuster. We didn’t get 60 seats, so nothing is getting passed unless Republicans agreed with it.
That means we can stop Republicans from passing disgusting bills, but we won’t be able to eg. abolish ICE or fix the department of education. The next 2 years are going to be a lot of obstrutionism of the Trump regime but not a lot o progress otherwise.
Just to add to this:
Congressional investigations, hearings, subpoenas become incredibly important these next two years. This is where Democrats gain real power aside from their ability to add more friction to Republican agenda (which unfortunately the damage has been done and will continue to be done from the Executive so long as the SCOTUS remains as it is).
Second to this, Democrats must use their new platform to explain what you explain here, that they need more votes in order to effect real change in 2028. They must adopt the Republican way and stay in campaign-mode from now through 2028.
Makes sense thanks
Even if the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority, any legislation they passed could still be vetoed by Trump. To overturn that they’d need 67 Senate seats plus two thirds of the House (and if they had that they could impeach and remove him outright).
But that would actually be good for the next presidential vote - no?
Because it can be shown that only he is blocking progress
Honestly, I don’t expect much but a slowdown in the rate of terrible things coming out every day. We will need to continue organizing, continue building support networks, continue finding ways to protest, support our neighbours and get people prepared to fight for all our sakes. This is a positive, in that it drops a boat anchor that will keep us from falling deeper into authoritarianism… for now. It will not, by itself get us out of this mess. It will not undo the damage that’s been done, and most importantly, it won’t last forever. It’s an opportunity to take a breath, regroup, and prepare ourselves for the hard work ahead.
Democrats in Congress isn’t going to save anyone. It’s just going to stabilize things, temporarily. It’s a place to start, not a finish line.
Edit: What’s far more promising is the number of state level elections that went blue. This is a massive opportunity to undo past state governments’ illegal election fixing and corruption, pass electoral reform, and get serious about laying the ground work to keep someone like Trump from ever taking power again.
